Eighth Corps charged through Avranches late on 31 July and crossed the Selune River. “Now that’s my kind of fighting,” Patton said. “Those troops know their business. We’ll keep right on going, full speed ahead.”
Patton ordered a two-pronged assault into Brittany: The 4th Armored and 8th Infantry divisions were to advance on Rennes, and the 6th Armored and 79th Infantry divisions were to seize Brest at the tip of the peninsula. Task Force A was created to clear the north coast.19
Task Force A was controlled by the 1st Tank Destroyer Brigade, an oddball formation in its only combat appearance. Only two TD brigades were ever organized, and the second disbanded before leaving the States. The brigade was envisioned as the controlling headquarters for a number of TD groups, each consisting of several battalions. Even the Army appeared unclear as to its purpose, but notionally that appeared to be to serve as the kernel for an add-hoc command to deal with massive enemy armored offensives. The task force included the 2d Cavalry Group, the 15th Cavalry Group, the 6th Tank Destroyer Group, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion, the 159th Engineer Combat Battalion, and the 509th Engineer Light Company. The command would advance to St. Malo, side-slip, and meet the 6th Armored Division at Brest.20
This task force is noteworthy because it established a pattern for Third Army’s frequent use of M18- equipped battalions in concert with cavalry units. The speedy Hellcats were able to keep up with the fastest cavalry thrusts and provided firepower that the light units lacked.21
The task force also displayed the American ingenuity in combat. The 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion on 4 August ran into a heavily defended roadblock near Chateauneuf. Headquarters Company deployed as infantry, but the Germans held firm despite point-blank fire from supporting M18s. The battalion finally cleared the block with indirect fire from an 81mm mortar mounted on the outfit’s wrecker.22
The TD battalions fought attached to widely dispersed units. As a consequence, reconnaissance companies sometimes performed their role for divisions rather than their battalions. The recon men of the 603d Tank Destroyer Battalion, for example, led the 6th Armored Division’s advance to Brest—where it took five hundred prisoners—and subsequently to Lorient.23 Other battalions, such as the 628th, split the recon company up and assigned one platoon to each of the scattered gun companies.24
A TD battalion operating with an armored division was blessed with a robust and effective integration with the big unit that tank killers with infantry divisions could only envy. A company commander, for example, could communicate by radio with his own platoon leaders and individual vehicles, the armored combat command, the artillery, and close air support. The company was far closer to being an organic component of the combat command than part of the distant and rarely encountered TD battalion to which it belonged.25 Indeed, battalion CPs quickly lost even radio contact with their far-flung companies because of the large distances involved.26 And armored divisions tended to view their attached TD battalions as an organic component—in part because the attachments tended to be lasting. The 3d Armored Divisions history, for example, notes, “Although originally wearing the [panther] patch of TD service, the fiercely independent 703d finally adopted the ‘Spearhead, patch and was as much a part of the division as any of its own tank battalions.”27
Captain Thomas Evans, CO of C/704th Tank Destroyer Battalion, described operations with the 4th Armored Division during the breakout:
We traveled mainly on highways and on paved roads as much as possible. The forward elements of the combat command, usually reconnaissance, would travel ahead and on both the right and left of the columns…. A company of tanks would usually lead the column, and interspersed back, they’d tell [us our] position in the column, depending on what they were going to do that day….
If [reconnaissance] hit any resistance, they moved off the road and the tanks set up to attack whatever it was if need be. Of course, the [armored] infantry pulled off, too. They immediately moved up on foot behind the tanks and decided whether they were going to attack that particular position. The same time they were getting ready, the mechanized artillery would pull off and set up to fire. So we had almost instantaneous fire support….
We traveled twenty, thirty, sometimes forty miles each day, all the way across France. The whole column was just moving at lightning speed. We’d hit some resistance, get off the road, and fight to break the resistance. We didn’t even mop up lots of times. We left that to the troops behind us….
We, the combat command mostly, would call for air strikes [by the XIX Tactical Air Command] if we ran into resistance that would take a head-on attack to overcome. The P-47s would come in and drop their 500-pound bombs and strafe the area. In my command vehicle, I had a crystal in my radio so that I could call for an air strike if it was necessary.28
In Brittany, the 4th Armored Division reached Rennes on 1 August. The TDs of Evans’s company made a demonstration against the defenders while the rest of CCA executed a double envelopment and drove through a ferocious storm of German artillery fire into the city. The M18s then pulled back a thousand yards and picked off eight or ten panzers and many trucks and horse-drawn artillery pieces as the defenders tried to escape. Two TDs were lost in this fighting.29 Sergeant Roger Turcan, commander of one of the destroyed M18s, was awarded a Silver Star for continuing to load and fire his gun after three other members of the crew had been killed.30
The 6th Armored Division reached Brest by 9 August. During the subsequent siege, A/603d Tank Destroyer Battalion was ordered to fire indirect missions with the goal of provoking counter-battery fire by the big guns in the fortifications in order to locate and destroy them. The battalion’s records to not indicate how the men felt about this mission.31
The informal history of the 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion, an M10 outfit that supported the 8th Infantry Division during the capture of Brest, recorded: “The operation was nastier than anyone anticipated. We found that we were facing a combination of paratroopers, marines, sailors, and fortress troops, well armed, cocky, and beautifully dug in. Hill 88, Kergroas, Pontanezan Barracks, the fort on the river, and a dozen other tight spots will stand in the history of this war as some of the toughest in Europe. Company A had to pick up rations in M10s, the pioneers dug Company C’s destroyers in on the outpost line at night, and Company B led the infantry from one critical point to the next. We watched the P-47s drop gasoline bombs, we put out red panels and were bombed by our own P-38s, watched a [B-17] go down when it collided with a Thuderbolt, began to take prisoners. Also, the Krauts had a few coastal guns that shook us up at night.”32
Meanwhile, on the eastern flank of the Avranches corridor, fighting had been fierce. Combat Command A/2d Armored Division became embroiled in a costly drive on Tessy sur Vire in support of XIX Corps, to which it was temporarily attached. During a thirteen-hour fight against a German counterattack on 28 July, the crews of the 702d Tank Destroyer battalion knocked out eleven panzers.33 On 1 August, the tankers and TDs battled a tenacious 2d Panzer Division defense near Tessy sur Vire itself. The Germans had deployed along the reverse slope of a hill before Tessy and engaged the American armor as the tanks crested the ridge and exposed themselves on the skyline. Working along the highway, the tank killers from B/702d Tank Destroyer Battalion accounted for two Panthers and five Mark IVs. Other TDs of the 702d were assigned to support a flank attack that began about 1500, and the M10s ran into a swarm of panzers. Company A KO’d two Panthers and four Mark IVs.34
The 893d (SP) and 612th (towed) Tank Destroyer battalions operated with the 2d Infantry Division in the neighboring V Corps sector in its attack toward the Vire River. The M10s worked just to the rear of the assault battalions to defend them against armored penetrations. The towed outfit came next, and its 3-inch guns took over positions from the self-propelled TDs and provided flank protection as the attack progressed.35
Nineteenth and V corps had their hands full, but most everyone else was off and running.
The history of the 3d Armored Division recorded with regard to CCA, “So fast was the advance… that, at Brecey [on 30 July], the speeding combat command caught German troops lolling under shade trees, drinking wine. This was a pleasure that tommygun fire and grenades quickly terminated. Brecey, however, was the scene of more vicious fighting later. Company A of the 703d Tank Destroyer Battalion found the town had been reoccupied after the lead elements of CCA passed through. With their 3-inch guns, the TD men thoroughly
